It rained off and on during the night and then in the early morning it really started to pour. We are already in the rainy season but with the weather system in the Carib pushing everything back to Middle America, we now get it all. Everything that might have drifted away is stuck above the… read more of “15 December 2011;…”

As expected and scheduled we arrived at the Breakwater of Cristobal at 05.15. In the last half hour we were called by Cristobal Signal station not to be too late and of course when we arrived we had to slow down as the Island Princess, ahead of us, was held up by a late out coming… read more of “14 December 2011;…”

It was a miserable sunrise with strong winds and heavy rain squalls. The good part was that the wind was a following wind and thus it remained nearly wind still on the decks but the rain poured down until after 10 am. Then it cleared and remained dry and even sunny for the remainder of… read more of “13 December 2011;…”

We made land fall around 0730 but there was very little land to see as the whole island was covered in rain showers. Rains showers before arrival are always good. They wash the salt off the decks and what falls before arrival cannot fall while you are going ashore. That worked out quite nicely as during… read more of “12 December 2011;…”

Around midnight we rounded Cabo Maisi, the east point of Cuba and entered the Windward Passage. It takes about six hours to sail through the passage and then you emerge south of cape Tiburon in the Caribbean Sea. Cape Tiburon is the south western point of Haiti. This area is called the Jamaican Passage as it… read more of “11 December 2011;…”

At the moment we are back to the regular weather for this area. North Easterly wind, force four to five with the occasional shower. As is the standard routine we try to hit the showers during the night time, to help the chief officer with getting the salt off the deck but we are trying to… read more of “10 December 2011;…”

As was forecast it was a windy morning with about 25 to 30 knots blowing from the North East, while the Ocean Liner parade was lining up at the pilot station. Everybody was nicely on time and with a 15 minute sequence one cruise ship after another slipped into the port. While this lining up… read more of “09 December 2011:…”

By midnight we had come around the eastern corner of Cuba, called Cabo Maisi and we were heading North West into the Old Bahama Channel. We did not see much of the coast here as we are hugging the right hand side of the Vessel Traffic Separation Scheme, our highway at sea. It looked like all… read more of “08 December 2011;…”